W.H. nabs Solyndra critics' flip-flops

The White House is playing the hypocrisy card to counter Republicans' Solyndra-fueled attacks on the administration's green agenda.

On the defensive against charges it sped up a $535 million loan guarantee to the failed solar company for political reasons, Obama administration officials have spent the last week digging up letters, sound bites and media stories from Republican lawmakers who had previously begged for clean energy spending in their districts.

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So far, the administration has discovered some big fish at the front of the anti-administration crusade — GOP Reps. Darrell Issa of California and Cliff Stearns of Florida and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to name a few — who have requested federal help on energy issues back home.

While trying to keep their fingerprints to a minimum, the Democrats want it known that the Republicans are overplaying their hand by attacking not just Solyndra, but also the administration’s broader attempt to turn around the economy with green energy. Issa, after all, is teeing off the company’s collapse by holding an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Thursday titled “How Obama's green energy agenda is killing jobs.”

One of the point people in the White House counterattacks has been spokesman Eric Schultz, whom the administration hired this spring to lead the messaging against much of the House Republicans' oversight efforts. He has been in regular touch with reporters covering Solyndra to highlight stories about the Republicans.

Stearns, the chairman of a House subpanel investigating Solyndra's demise, got flagged by the White House effort Sept. 15, not long after he used a speech at the Heritage Foundation to take aim at the president's push to create jobs with green technologies.

“The question is, how many Solyndras are out there?” Stearns said in the speech. “I’m convinced, based upon what I’ve seen in this kind of industry, in the solar industry, that there’s more that are going to go bankrupt, and I think the president is unwise to continue this idea of funding, through taxpayers’ money, industries like the solar panel that are not viable.”

But White House officials circulated a May 2010 quote in which Stearns celebrated the opening of a Saft battery manufacturing facility in Jacksonville, Fla. The company, whose batteries are used for purposes including solar energy storage, had been awarded a $95.5 million Energy Department grant that, like Solyndra's loan guarantee, was funded through the 2009 stimulus law.

"I am honored to join in welcoming Saft's Li-ion battery manufacturing facility to the Cecil Commerce Center, which underscores that this is a good place to do business," Stearns said in a news release at the time. "In addition, as a member of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, I recognize the contributions of these advanced rechargeable batteries in meeting our energy needs."